Seymour Hersh claims that Kennedy was planning to select Stuart Symington of Missouri as his running mate but was blackmailed into picking LBJ by J. Edgar Hoover.

Would a Kennedy-Symington ticket have beaten Nixon? Nixon might have carried Texas but that wouldn't have been enough to give him the victory (Missouri went for Kennedy anyway). Possibly more of the Southern electoral votes would have gone to Harry F. Byrd so without LBJ on the ticket possibly the election would have gone into the House of Representatives.